The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17

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CHAPTER X. ALEXANDER I, MYSTIC AND HUMANITARIAN

Heaven grant that we may one day attain our aim of making Russia free and of preserving her from despotism and tyranny. This is my unique desire, and I willingly sacrifice all my labours and my life to the aim that is so dear to me.—Alexander I.

THE COMPLEX CHARACTER OF ALEXANDER I

[1801-1825 A.D.]

In the preceding chapter, we followed the history of the external affairs of Russia during fourteen years of the reign of Alexander I. Now we shall witness the incidents of that monarch’s later years, and, in particular, shall consider the internal condition of Russia during the reign of one of the most interesting of sovereigns. Clearly to appreciate the complex character of the reigns, we may follow Shilder, partly by way of recapitulation, in dividing it into three periods, each of which seems to represent a phase of the mental evolution of Alexander.[a]

The first period embraces the time between the years 1801 and 1810, and is usually designated as the epoch of reforms, but as we penetrate more deeply into the spirit of that period, we come to the conclusion that it might more justly be termed the epoch of vacillations. Actually, at this time, that is from 1801 to 1810, ceaseless vacillations took place in the governmental life of Russia, both in regard to the outward as well as the inward policy of the empire; throughout every branch of the administration of the state an entire instability of views and brusque changes from one political system to another were to be observed. All these manifestations were conditional exclusively on the personality of the emperor Alexander, who possessed the characteristic of not unfrequently vacillating at short intervals between two entirely opposed frames of mind, without reference to the direction he had elected to follow.

The second period is continued from 1810 to 1816 and in its inner signification is entirely concentrated in the struggle with France. This period in contrast to the preceding, is distinguished by the pursuit of one ruling idea, carried out with remarkable consecutiveness to the end, an instance which is almost unique in the whole reign of Alexander. Unexpectedly to all, to the astonishment of the whole world, in 1812, he showed himself immovable and decided to be or not to be. Meanwhile Napoleon, preparing himself for the invasion of Russia, had based his political and military calculations upon the imaginary weakness of Alexander’s character, and in this respect the conqueror’s hidden thoughts corresponded with the secret calculations of his allies, Metternich and Hardenburg. All these three enemies of Russia were however destined to experience complete disenchantment. The ruling idea of Alexander, which he then steadfastly followed, consisted in the overthrow of Napoleon. [These two periods we have covered in the preceding chapter, but we shall have occasion to revert to certain phases and incidents of their development.]

The third period, beginning from the year 1816, finishes with the death of the emperor Alexander in 1825. Historians usually call it the period of congresses and of the preservation of order in Europe established by them. It would be more exact and nearer to the truth to call this last decade the period of reaction.

After the overthrow of Napoleon the emperor Alexander appears as a weary martyr, wavering between the growing influence of Araktcheiev and his own personal convictions which he had adopted in the days of his youth. Amongst the reactionary measures which commenced in 1816 there can still be traced bright gleams of the enthusiasms and dreams of his youth. The speech pronounced in 1818 by the emperor at the opening of the Polish diet testifies to this. But from the year 1820 a complete vanishing of all the previous ideals to the realisation of which he had once aspired with sincere enthusiasm, is to be observed. To this moral condition was also united an incurable weariness of life, the signs of which had already been observed in the emperor Alexander by Metternich at the congress of Verona in 1822.

As we enter upon a closer analysis of the three periods into which we have divided this reign, we remark another curious feature in the development of Alexander. Metternich calls this phenomenon that of the periodic evolutions of the emperor’s mind (les évolutions périodiques de son esprit). The phenomenon was repeated with striking regularity about every five years of his reign. Assimilating to himself any idea with which he was inspired, Alexander gave himself up to it, unhesitatingly and with full enthusiasm. The incubation required about two years, during which the idea acquired for him the importance of a system; the third year he remained faithful to the system chosen, he became more and more attached to it, he listened with real enthusiasm to its upholders and at such a time was inaccessible to any influence that might shake the justness of the views he had adopted. The fourth year he grew disturbed at the consequences which might possibly arise; the fifth year there became observable a medley of the old and vanishing system with some new idea which was beginning to take birth in his mind. This idea was usually diametrically opposed to the one that had left his horizon. After that, when he had assimilated the new convictions, he did not preserve any remembrance of the ideas he had abandoned, beyond the obligations which bound him to the various representatives of the former views.[b]

MINISTERIAL INFLUENCES; SPERANSKI AND ARAKTCHEIEV

[1801-1815 A.D.]

From 1806 to 1812 the preponderating influence over Alexander I was that of Speranski. Son of a village priest, educated in a seminary, and afterwards professor of mathematics and philosophy in the seminary of Alexander Nevski, Speranski became preceptor to the children of Alexis Kurakin, thanks to whom he quitted the ecclesiastical for a civil career, and became secretary to Trochtchinski, who was then chancellor of the imperial council. Later, after he had become director of the department of the interior under Prince Kotchubei, Speranski rose to the position of secretary of state and gained the complete confidence of the emperor. The favourites of the preceding period had all been imbued with English ideas; Speranski, on the contrary, loved France and manifested a particular admiration for Napoleon. These French sympathies, shared at the time by Alexander I, formed a new bond between the prince and the minister which was not severed until the rupture with Napoleon. “We know,” said Monsieur Bogdanovitch, “Alexander’s fondness for representative forms and a constitutional government, but this taste resembles that of a dilettante who goes into ecstacies over a fine painting. Alexander early convinced himself that neither Russia’s vast extent nor the constitution of civil society would permit the realisation of his dream. From day to day he deferred the execution of his utopian ideas, but delighted to discourse with his intimates upon the projected constitution and the disadvantages of absolutism. To please the emperor, Speranski ardently defended the principles of liberty, and by so doing exposed himself to accusations of anarchy and of having conceived projects dangerous to institutions that had received the consecration of time and custom.” Painstaking, learned, and profoundly patriotic and humane, he was the man best able to realise all that was practicable in the ideas of Alexander.

Speranski presented to the sovereign a systematic plan of reform. The imperial council received an extension of privileges. Composed as it was of the chief dignitaries of the state, it became in a measure the legislative power, and had the duty of examining new laws, extraordinary measures, and ministerial reports; it was in reality a sketch of a representative government. After the interview at Erfurt, during which Napoleon had showed him marked attention, Speranski entered into relations with the French legal writers, Locré, Legras, Dupont de Nemours, and made them correspondents of the legislative commission of the imperial council. The Code Napoleon was not adapted to any but a homogeneous nation emancipated from personal and feudal servitude, with a population whose members all enjoyed a certain equality before the law. Thus to Speranski the emancipation of the serfs was the corner-stone of regeneration. He dreamed of instituting a third estate, of limiting the number of privileged classes, and of forming the great aristocratic families into a peerage similar to that of England. He encouraged Count Stroinovski to publish his pamphlet, Rules to be Observed between Proprietors and Serfs. As early as 1809 he had decided that the holders of university degrees should have the advantage over all others in attaining the degrees of the tchin. Thus a doctor would at once enter the eighth rank, a master of arts the ninth, a candidate the tenth, and a bachelor the twelfth.

Like Turgot, the minister of Louis XVIII, and the Prussian reformer, Stein, Speranski had aroused the hostility of everyone. The nobility of court and ante-chamber, and all the young officials who wished to rise by favour alone were exasperated by the ukase of 1809; proprietors were alarmed at Speranski’s project for the emancipation of the serfs; the senators were irritated by his plans for reorganisation which would reduce the first governing body of the empire to the position of a supreme court of justice; and the high aristocracy was incensed at the boldness of a man of low condition, the son of a village priest. The people themselves complained at the increase in taxation, all those whose interests had been set aside united against the upstart; he was accused of despising the time-honoured institutions of Moscow and of having presented as a model to the Russians the Code Napoleon when the country was on the eve of war with France. The ministers Balachev, Armfelt, Guriev, Count Rostoptchin, Araktcheiev, and the grand duchess Catherine Pavlovna, sister of the emperor, influenced Alexander against him. Karamzin, the historian, addressed to the emperor an impassioned memoir on New and Old Russia, in which he stepped forth as the champion of serfdom, of the old laws, and of autocracy. Speranski’s enemy even went to the length of denouncing him as a traitor and an accomplice of France. In March, 1812, he was suddenly sent from the capital to Nijni-Novgorod and afterwards deported to a distant post where he was subjected to close surveillance. He was recalled in 1819, when passions had somewhat cooled, and was appointed governor of Siberia. In 1821 he returned to St. Petersburg, but did not recover his former position.

A new epoch now set in. The adversaries of Speranski, Armfelt, Schichkov, and Rostoptchin attained high positions, but the acknowledged favourite was Araktcheiev, the rough “corporal of Gachina,” born enemy to progress and reform and apostle of absolute dominion and passive obedience. He gained the confidence of Alexander, first by his devotion to the memory of Paul, next by his punctuality, his unquestioning obedience, his disinterestedness and habits of industry, and lastly by his ingenuous admiration for the “genius of the emperor.” He was the most trustworthy of servitors, the most imperious of superiors, and the most perfect instrument for a reaction. His influence was not at once exclusive. After having conquered Napoleon, Alexander looked upon himself as the liberator of nations. He had set Germany free; he dealt leniently with France and obtained for it a charter; he granted a constitution to Poland, with the intention of extending its benefit to Russia. Though the censorship of the press had recently forbidden the Viestnik slovesnosti to criticise, “the servants of his majesty,” Alexander had not entirely renounced his utopian ideas. English Protestant influence succeeded to the influence of France; French theatres were closed and Bible societies opened.

Nevertheless, this first period of favour for Araktcheiev soon became an epoch of sterility; though reaction had not yet set in there had at least come a decided pause. The reforms interrupted by the war of 1812 were not to be again resumed. The code of Speranski had come to an end and all efforts to compile one better suited to Russian traditions were of no avail.[f]

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES; THE LYCÉE AND THE LIBRARY

On the 23rd of January of the year 1811 was promulgated the statute of the lycée of Tsarskoi Selo, which had been definitely worked out by secretary of state Speranski. The aim of the establishment of the lycée was the education of young men, and chiefly of those who were destined to fill the most important posts of the government service. The following circumstance was the primary cause of the foundation of this higher educational establishment: although the emperor did not interfere in the matter of the education of his younger brothers, the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael Pavlovitch, which was entirely left to the empress, Marie Feodorovna, a case soon presented itself where the emperor recognised the necessity of departing from the rule he had established. The widowed empress desired to send her sons to the university of Leipsic for the completion of their studies; this was, however, firmly opposed by the emperor, and instead he had the idea of establishing a lycée at Tsarskoi Selo, where his younger brothers could assist at the public lectures. A wing of the palace connected by a gallery with the chief building, was adapted to this purpose, and the solemn opening of the Tsarskoi Selo lycée took place on the 31st of October, 1811, in the presence of the emperor Alexander. It commenced with a thanksgiving service in the court chapel of Tsarskoi Selo, after which those present accompanied the clergy who made the tour of the edifice, sprinkling it with holy water. At the conclusion of the ecclesiastical ceremony, the imperial charter given to the lycée was read in the hall of the building, and the speeches began. Amongst them that of the adjunct professor Kunitzin earned the special approbation of the emperor for the art with which it avoided generalisations and dwelt on the beneficence of the founder. In conclusion, Alexander inspected the premises allotted to the students, and was present at their dinner table.

Tower of Ivan Velika, Moscow

The year 1811 was also signalised by the completion of the building of the Kazan cathedral, the first stone of which had been laid by the emperor Alexander on the 8th of September, 1801. The constructor of the cathedral was the Russian architect Andrew Nikivorovitch Voroniknin. The building committee was under the direction of the president of the Academy of Arts, Count Alexander Stroganov. The building of the cathedral took ten years, and on the 27th of September, 1811, on the anniversary of the emperor’s coronation, the solemn consecration of the new cathedral took place in the presence of the emperor. Count Stroganov was that day elevated to the dignity of actual privy councillor of the first rank. He was not destined to enjoy for long the completion of his work: ten days later he died.

In the very thick of the preparations for war, and amidst such agitating political circumstances as had been unknown till then, the emperor Alexander continued to labour for the enlightenment of his subjects. Notable among his acts at this time was the foundation of a public library. Catherine II’s idea of founding in the capital a library for general use, and of rendering it accessible to all, was only brought to fulfilment by Alexander. A special edifice was built with this object; its construction had been already commenced during Catherine’s reign. By 1812 all the preliminary work in the building of this library was completed, and on the 14th of January the emperor honoured the newly constructed library with a visit, and examined in detail all its curiosities. Following on this the “draft of detailed rules for the administration of the Imperial Public Library” was ratified by his majesty on the 7th of March.

The events of 1812, however, deferred the actual opening of the library: soon measures had to be thought of to save its treasures. The opening ceremony took place, therefore, two years later, in 1814, on the 14th of January, the anniversary of the day on which the emperor Alexander made his gracious visit to the library, on the memorable occasion of its founding.

A great many festivities took place at the Russian court upon the occasion of the marriage of the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch with the princess Charlotte of Prussia (July 13th, 1817). About the same time (July 31st, 1817), a modest festival was celebrated at Tsarskoi Selo—the first distribution of prizes to students of the lycée. On that day the emperor Alexander, accompanied by Prince A. N. Galitzin, was present in the conference hall of the institution he had founded; he himself distributed the prizes and certificates to the pupils, and after having announced the awards to be given to them and their teachers he left, bidding a fatherly farewell to all. The poet Pushkin was amongst the students who took part in the festival.

EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS FROM ST. PETERSBURG

The year 1815, which had been filled with a series of unexpected events, terminated with an important administrative measure which no one had foreseen. On the 18th of January, 1817, an imperial ukase was issued ordering the immediate expulsion of all the monks of the order of Jesuits from St. Petersburg, and at the same time forbidding their entry into either of the two capitals. In the middle of the night they were provided with fur cloaks, and warm boots, and despatched in carts to the residence of their brethren at Polotsk.[60] It was enjoined in this ukase that the Catholic church in St. Petersburg should be “placed on the same footing that had been established during the reign of the empress Catherine II and which had endured up to the year 1800.” This expulsion put an end to the pedagogical activity of the Jesuits in St. Petersburg. The words of N. J. Turgeniev, spoken in the year 1812 and addressed to his successor Gruber, the Berezovski Jesuit, were, in fact, realised for the order in the most unpleasant way. He said: “This is the beginning of the end; you will now do so much that you will be sent away.” The government was compelled to have recourse to decisive measures in view of cases of conversion to Catholicism amongst the orthodox pupils of the Jesuit school in St. Petersburg; besides which the influence of Jesuit propaganda was spreading in a remarkable way amongst the ladies of the high society of St. Petersburg.

This measure, however, did not put a limit to the misfortunes that descended upon the Jesuits during the reign of Alexander. A few years later (on the 25th of March, 1820) the order was given that the Jesuits should be expelled finally from Russia, adding that they were not under any aspect or denomination to be allowed to return; and at the same time the Polotsk academy was suppressed, as well as all the schools depending on it.

LIBERATION OF THE PEASANTS OF THE BALTIC PROVINCES (1816-1818 A.D.)

[1816-1818 A.D.]

The nobility of Esthonia had in 1811 announced their desire of giving up their rights of servitude over their peasants. In the year 1816 this intention led to the confirmation of the establishment of the Esthonian peasants upon a new footing, according to which the individual right of servitude was abolished. The nobility kept the land as their property, and the relations between the peasants and the landowners were from thenceforth based upon mutual agreement by free will contracts conformable with rules determining essential conditions; a period of transition was appointed for bringing in the new order of things. After the first trial, the individual, landless liberation of the peasants spread throughout the Baltic provinces and in other governments—namely, in Courland in 1817 and in Livonia in 1819. The introduction of the new order of things was everywhere accomplished without any particular difficulty.

In expressing to the Livonian nobility his satisfaction upon the occasion of the reform effectuated, the emperor Alexander said: “I rejoice that the Livonian nobility has justified my expectations. Your example deserves imitation. You have acted in accordance with the spirit of the times and have understood that liberal principles alone can serve as a basis for the happiness of nations.” From these words it is evident that the emperor entertained, according to Shishkov’s expression, an unfortunate prejudice against the right of servitude in Russia, and it appeared to many that in other parts of the empire words would be followed by deeds.[61]

From the year 1816, the peasant question began to occupy society. The aide-de-camp of his majesty, Kisselev, even presented a memoir to the emperor which bore the title Of the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in Russia. The memoir began with the words: “Civic liberty is the foundation of national prosperity. This truth is so undoubted that I consider it superfluous here to explain how desirable it is that the lawful independence of which serfs and agriculturists, are unjustly deprived, should be established for them throughout the empire. I consider this measure the more needful now that the progress of enlightenment and our closer contact with Europe, which hourly increases the fermentation of minds, indicate to the government the necessity of averting the consequences which may follow, and whose menace it would be already difficult or impossible to deny. The blood in which the French Revolution was steeped bears witness to this.” In what manner the emperor Alexander regarded the memoir presented by his aide-de-camp, and what fate overtook this production of his pen has remained unknown.

P. D. Kisselev was not the only nobleman who recognised the urgent necessity of the government’s occupying itself with the peasant question. The following circumstance serves as a proof of this: in this same year, 1816, many of the richest landowners of the government of St. Petersburg, knowing the emperor’s moral aspirations to better the lot of the peasant serfs, decided to turn them into obligatory settlers upon the basis of the then existing regulations. The act was drawn up and signed by sixty-five landowners; it only remained to take it to be ratified by the emperor, and for this purpose the general aide-de-camp J. V. Vasiltchikov was chosen. Those who had taken part in the signature of the act supposed that the emperor knew nothing of the meetings that had taken place on the occasion and were convinced that he would receive graciously a proposition, which was in accordance with his manner of thinking. But the emperor Alexander was aware of the determination of the nobles and hardly had Vasiltchikov, after requesting permission to present himself to his majesty, begun to speak of the matter, when Alexander, interrupting him, inquired: “To whom, in your opinion, does the legislative power belong in Russia?” And when Vasiltchikov replied: “Without doubt to your imperial majesty as an autocratic emperor,” Alexander, raising his voice, said, “Then leave it to me to promulgate such laws as I consider most beneficial to my subjects.”

The emperor’s reply gave little hope of a favourable solution of this important question. In the then existing state of affairs, the matter could not avoid passing through the hands of Araktcheiev. This indeed actually happened. In February, 1818, before the departure of the emperor Alexander from Moscow for Warsaw to open the first Polish diet, Count Araktcheiev announced that his majesty had deigned to issue an edict for the liberation of landowners’ peasants from the condition of serfdom, with the stipulation that the edict should not in any of its measures be oppressive to the landowners, and especially that it should not present anything of a violent character in its accomplishment on the part of the government: but, on the contrary, that it should be accompanied by advantages for the landowners and awaken in them a desire to co-operate with the government in the abolition of the conditions of serfdom in Russia, an abolition corresponding to the spirit of the times and the progress of education, and indispensable for the future tranquillity of the possessors of serfs.

THE EMPEROR AND THE QUAKERS

In 1814, at the time of the emperor Alexander’s stay in London, the famous philanthropist Quakers, De Grelle de Mobillier,[62] and Allen, had been inspired with the idea of taking advantage of a favourable occasion, and instilling into the minds of the allied sovereigns the conviction that the kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of justice and truth. With this object they first set off to visit the king of Prussia, who received them and praised the Quakers living in his dominions, but expressed his conviction that war is indispensable for the attainment of peace. The emperor Alexander showed them more sympathy; he visited a Quaker meeting and received a deputation. The emperor assured the Quakers that he was in agreement with the greater part of their opinions, and that although on account of his exceptional position his mode of action must be other than theirs, yet he was in union with them in the spiritual worship of Christ. In taking leave of the Quakers, Alexander invited them to come to see him in Russia and said: “I bid you farewell as a friend and brother.”

Grelle and Allen arrived in St. Petersburg in November, 1818, during the emperor’s absence. They went to Prince A. N. Galitzin, of whom Grelle wrote: “He is a man penetrated by a truly Christian spirit.” Galitzin received the Quakers with an open heart and informed them that the emperor had sent him a letter telling him of their coming to Russia and requesting that they might be received as his friends. After various questions upon religious matters the Quakers, together with Prince Galitzin, gave themselves up to silent, inward meditation, and this method, writes Grelle, “did not appear at all unknown to the prince. Inspired by the love of Christ, we felt in ourselves, after silent, heartfelt prayer, the beneficent moving of grace. In taking leave of the prince, he offered us free access to all that could interest us—to the prisons, to reformatory institutions, and to refuges for the poor.”

Their visit to the St. Petersburg prisons deeply agitated the pious Quakers; according to Grelle’s observations, some of them were very dirty and overrun with vermin; the odour was unbearable and the air contaminated to such a degree that it affected the heads and lungs of the visitors. The Quakers also inspected a few refuges and schools.

On a subsequent evening the emperor Alexander received the Quakers alone. He called them his old friends, made them sit beside him on the sofa, and called to mind with inward emotion their interview in London in 1814, saying that it had given him the spirit of courage and firmness amidst all the difficult circumstances in which he was then placed. “The emperor then,” writes Grelle, “suggested to us some questions upon religious matters, thus showing his sincere desire to progress in the saving knowledge of truth. He further questioned us as to what we had seen and done in Russia. We took advantage of the opportunity to relate to him the distressing condition of the prisons; and in particular we directed his attention to the wretched state of the prison in Åbo, and told him about an unfortunate man who had been kept in irons there for nineteen years. The emperor was touched by our narrative and said, ‘This ought not to be; it shall not occur again.’” The Quakers also informed the emperor how deeply grieved they had been to see, upon inspecting one of the schools, that the pupils were given books to read that were pernicious to their morals; after which they showed him a specimen of extracts they had made from the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools. The emperor remained wrapped in thought for a moment, and then turning to his companions, he observed: “You have done precisely what I much desired. I have often thought that schools might serve as a powerful instrument for the furtherance of the kingdom of Christ, by leading the people to the knowledge of the Saviour and the principles of true piety. Send me as soon as possible all that you have succeeded in preparing.”

The conversation then touched on Daniel Villers, also a Quaker, whom the emperor had called to St. Petersburg to drain the marshes; Alexander said that he regarded his presence in Russia as a blessing to the people. “It was not the draining of the marshes,” added the emperor, “nor any other material necessity that was the cause of my inviting some of your ‘friends’ to come here; no, I was guided by the wish that their true piety, their probity, and other virtues might serve as an example for my people to imitate.”

In conclusion the emperor said, “Before we separate, let us try to spend some time in common prayer.” “We willingly consented,” writes Grelle in regard to this matter, “feeling that the Lord with his beneficent power was near us. Some time passed in silent, inward contemplation; our souls were humbled, and a little later I felt within me the heavenly breathing of the spirit of prayer and compunction; enfolded by the spirit, I bent my knees before the greatness of God; the emperor knelt beside me. Amidst the inward outpourings of the soul we felt that the Lord had consented to hear our prayers. After that we spent a little while longer in silence and then withdrew. In bidding us farewell the emperor expressed the desire to see us again before we left. We spent two hours with him.”

After this remarkable audience, which so graphically expresses the religious-idealistic frame of mind of the emperor Alexander, the Quakers visited under the patronage of the widowed empress the female educational establishments, the young pupils of which aroused much sympathy in them. Grelle found that some of them had hearts open for receiving evangelical inspiration. These visits were followed by the reception of the Quakers by the empress Marie Feodorovna. They told the empress that they were much pleased at the condition of the institutions under her patronage, but at the same time they could not be otherwise than grieved to see how little attention was paid in St. Petersburg, and in general throughout Russia, to the education of children of the lower classes; they also spoke to the empress of the unsatisfactoriness of the then existing prison accommodations for women, and indicated how advantageous it would be if the prisons were visited by women capable of instructing and consoling the unfortunate prisoners. The empress entirely agreed with these ideas.

Russian Priest

Soon the emperor again invited the Quakers to come and see him. “He again received us in his private apartments,” writes Grelle, “to which we were taken by a secret way, avoiding the guard and the court servants. Nobody seemed surprised to see us keeping our heads covered. The emperor, as before, received us with sincere affability. He began by informing us that the chains in which we had seen the prisoners at Åbo had been taken off, that the unfortunate man of whom we had told him had been set at liberty, and that orders had been given that the other prisoners were to be better treated. He then asked us to relate to him openly all that we had noticed in the prisons during our stay in Russia. The governor-general (Count Miloradovitch) had informed him of the changes and improvements which he considered it advantageous to carry out in the gaols, and the emperor entirely approved of the changes that had already been made. He further told us that the widowed empress had spoken to him with pleasure of our visit to her; that she had taken to heart what we had said of the extreme neglect of the education of children of the poorer classes, and that she was occupying herself in searching for the most effectual measures of remedying this defect as soon as possible. The emperor added that he had named a certain sum of money to be used for the establishment of six schools for poor children in the capital, and that the children were to receive there a religious and moral education. He further told us that he had attentively perused the books we had prepared and was delighted with them; that if we had only come to Russia to do this, we had already accomplished a very important work, and that he intended to bring our books into use throughout all the schools of his empire.”

Before their departure for Moscow the emperor received his old friends a third time, and on this occasion he related to them various details of how he had himself been educated under the supervision of his grandmother, the empress Catherine. “The persons attached to me,” said he, “had some good qualities, but they were not believing Christians and therefore my primary education was not united with any profound moral impressions; in accordance with the customs of our church, I was taught formally to repeat morning and evening certain prayers I had learned; but this habit, which did not in any wise satisfy the inward requirements of my religious feelings, soon wearied me. Meanwhile it happened more than once that, when I lay down to rest, I had a lively feeling in my soul of my sins, and of the various moral deficiencies of my mode of life; thus penetrated by heartfelt repentance I was moved by a desire to rise from my bed and in the silence of the night to throw myself upon my knees and with tears ask God for forgiveness and for strength to preserve greater watchfulness over myself in future. This contrition of heart continued for some time; but little by little, in the absence of moral support on the part of the persons who surrounded me, I began to feel more seldom and more feebly these salutary movings of grace. Sin, together with worldly distractions, began to reign more and more within my soul. Finally, in 1812, the Lord in his love and mercy, again called to me, and the former movings of grace were renewed with fresh strength in my heart. At that period a certain pious person[63] advised me to take to reading the Holy Scriptures and gave me a Bible, a book which until then I had never had in my hands. I devoured the Bible finding that its words shed a new and never previously experienced peace in my heart, and satisfied the thirst of my soul. The Lord in his goodness granted me his Spirit to understand what I read; and to this inward instruction and enlightenment I owe all the spiritual good that I acquired by the reading of the divine Word; this is why I look upon inward enlightenment or instruction from the Holy Ghost as the firmest support in the soul—saving knowledge of God.”

The emperor then related to his companions how deeply his soul was penetrated with the desire to abolish forever wars and bloodshed upon earth. “He said,” writes Grelle, “that he had passed many nights without sleep in strained and intense deliberation as to how this sacred desire could be realised, and in deep grief at the thought of the innumerable calamities and misfortunes that are occasioned by war. At that time when his soul was thus bowed down in ardent prayer to the Saviour the idea arose in him of inviting the crowned heads to unite in one holy alliance, before the tribunal of which all future disagreements that should arise should be settled, instead of having recourse to the sword and to bloodshed. This idea took such possession of him that he got up from his bed, expounded his feelings and aspirations in writing with such liveliness and ardour that his intentions were subjected on the part of many to unmerited suspicion and misinterpretation—‘Although,’ added he with a sigh, ‘ardent love for God and mankind was the sole motive that governed me.’ Thoughts of the formation of the Holy Alliance again arose in him during his stay in Paris. After we had spent some time in conversing on this important subject, the emperor said to us: ‘And thus we part, in this world, but I firmly trust that we, being separated by space, will however remain by the goodness of the spirit of God forever united through inward spiritual fellowship, for in the kingdom of God there are no limitations of space. Now, before we part, I have one request to make to you: let us join in silent prayer and see if the Lord will not consent to manifest his gracious presence to us, as he did the last time.’

“We gladly consented to fulfil his desire. A solemn silence followed during which we felt that the Lord was amongst us; our souls were reverently opened before him and he himself was working within us through his grace. Somewhat later, I felt, through the breathing of the love of Christ, the lively desire of saying a few words of approbation to our beloved emperor in order to encourage him to walk with firm steps in the Lord’s way and to put his whole trust, unto the end of his earthly journeyings, in the efficaciousness of the divine grace; in general I felt the necessity of guarding him from evil and strengthening him in his good intention of ever following the path of truth and righteousness. The words that I said produced a profound impression upon the emperor and he shed burning tears. Then our dear Allen, kneeling, raised a fervent prayer to God for the emperor and his people. The emperor himself fell on his knees beside him and remained a long while with us in spiritual outpourings before the Lord. Finally we solemnly and touchingly took leave of each other.”

SECRET SOCIETIES UNDER ALEXANDER I

A Valdai Woman

After the year 1815, when the emperor Alexander already appeared as a weary martyr, immersed in mystic contemplation and wavering between the evergrowing influence of Count Araktcheiev and the convictions he had himself formed in the days of his youth, the events of 1812 were reflected in a totally different manner upon the movement of social ideas in Russia. The war of the fatherland was accompanied in Russia by an unusual rising of the spirit of the nation and a remarkable awakening of the public conscience. The continuation of the struggle with Napoleon beyond the frontiers of Russia had led Alexander’s troops to Paris. This enforced military exploit widened the horizon of the Russian people; they became acquainted with European manners and customs, were in closer contact with the current of European thought, and felt drawn towards political judgment. It was quite natural that the Russian people should begin to compare the order of things in their own country with political and public organisation abroad. An unrestrainable impulse to criticise and compare was awakened; thenceforth it was difficult to become reconciled to the former status of Russian life and the traditional order of things.

It will be asked what abuses presented themselves to the gaze of the Russian conquerors, who had liberated Europe, upon their return to their country. An entire absence of respect for the rights of the individual was patent; the forcible introduction of monstrous military settlements, the exploits of Magnitski and others of his kind in the department of public instruction were crying shames; and, finally, the cruelties of serfdom were in full activity. The subtile exactions which then prevailed in service at the front completed the development of general dissatisfaction amongst military circles. There is, therefore, nothing astonishing in the fact that the misfortunes which then weighed upon the Russian people should have found an answering call in the hearts of men who were at that time in the grip of a violent patriotic revival.

The natural consequence of this joyless condition of affairs in Russia was a hidden protest, which led to the formation of secret societies. Under the then existing conditions there was no possibility of carrying on reformatory deliberations with the cognisance of the government. Thus a remarkable phenomenon was accomplished; on the one hand Russian public thought was seeking for itself an issue and solution of the questions that oppressed it; while on the other the emperor Alexander, disenchanted with his former political ideals and standing at the head of the European reaction, had become the unexpected champion of aspirations which had nothing in common with the ideas of which he had been the representative during the best period of his life. This circumstance made a break in the interior life of Russia, which imperceptibly prepared the ground for events until then unprecedented in Russian history. “What has become of liberalism?” is a question that one of the contemporaries of that epoch sets himself. “It seems to have vanished, to have disappeared from the face of the earth; everything is silent. And yet it is just at this instant that its hidden forces have begun to grow dangerous.” The time had come when secret societies were in full bloom. The masonic lodges, which had been allowed by the government, had long since accustomed the Russian nobility to the form of secret societies. Officers’ circles, in which conversations were carried on about the wounds of Russia, the obduracy of the people, the distressing position of the soldier, the indifference of society to the affairs of the country, imperceptibly changed into organised secret societies.

It happened that yet another time the emperor Alexander expressed the conviction that the interior administration of Russia ought to be thought of, that it was necessary that means should be taken for remedying the evil; but the sovereign did not pass from words to deeds. In reference to this, the ideas expressed by Alexander to the governor of Penza, T. P. Lubianovski, on the occasion of his visit to that town in 1824 are worthy of attention. The emperor had inspected the second infantry corps there assembled; the manœuvres had deserved particular praise. Observing signs of weariness on the emperor’s face, Lubianovski ventured to remark that the empire had reason to complain of his majesty.

“Why?” “You will not take care of yourself.” “You mean to say that I am tired?” replied the emperor. “It is impossible to look at the troops without satisfaction; the men are good, faithful and excellently trained; we have gained no little glory through them. Russia has enough glory; she does not require more; it would be a mistake to require more. But when I think how little has been as yet done in the interior of the empire, then the thought lies on my heart like a ten-pound weight. That is what makes me tired.”

The profoundly true thought that fell from the lips of the sovereign in his conversation with Lubianovski was not, however, put into application. At that period it was impossible to count upon the amendment of the state edifice through the administrations of the government. The dim figure of Araktcheiev had definitively succeeded in screening Russia from the gaze of Alexander, and his evil influence was felt at every step. Therefore in the main everything led to the sorrowful result that the emperor, as Viguel expressed it, was like a gentleman who, having grown tired of administering his own estate, had given it over entirely into the hands of a stern steward, being thus sure that the peasants would not become spoiled under him.

A few words remain to be said of the fate that overtook the secret societies after the closing of the Alliance of the Public Good. Benkendorf’s[64] supposition that a new and more secret society would be formed after this, which would act under the veil of greater security, was actually justified. The more zealous members of the alliance only joined together more closely, and from its ruins arose two fresh alliances—the Northern and the Southern.

The leaders of the Northern Alliance in the beginning were Muraviev and Turgeniev. Later on, in 1823, Kondratz Bileiev entered the society, of which he became the leader. The aspirations of the Northern Alliance were of a constitutional-monarchic character. In the Southern Alliance, chiefly composed of members of the second army, the principal leader was the commander of the Viatka infantry regiment, Colonel Paul Pestel, son of the former governor-general of Siberia. Thanks to Pestel’s influence the Southern Alliance acquired a preponderating republican tendency; he occupied himself with the composition of a work which he called Russian Truth, in which he expounded his ideas on the reconstruction of Russia. Many members of this society inclined to the conviction that the death of the emperor Alexander and even the extermination of the entire imperial family were indispensable to the successful realisation of their proposed undertakings; at any rate there is no doubt that conversations to this effect were carried on amongst the members of the secret societies. Soon the active propaganda of the members of the Southern Society called another society into existence—the Slavonic Alliance or the United Slavonians. In it was chiefly concentrated the radical element from the midst of the future Dekabrists. The members of this society proposed insane and violent projects and insisted chiefly on the speedy commencement of decisive action, giving only a secondary importance to deliberations on the constitutional form of government. Sergei Nuraviev Apostol called them mad dogs chained.

There yet remained a better means for strengthening the designs of the secret societies—this was to enter into relations with the Polish secret societies. Negotiations with the representative of the Polish patriotic alliance, Prince Tablonovski, were personally carried on by Pestel; but the details of this agreement are even now little known. Such was the dangerous and fruitless path into which many of the best representatives of thinking Russia were drawn: each year the crisis became more and more inevitable; and meanwhile the government became more decisively confirmed than ever in the pathway of reaction, thus indirectly giving greater power to secret revolutionary propaganda.

Closing of the Masonic Lodges

In August, 1822, a rescript was issued in the name of the minister of the interior, ordering the closing of all secret societies, under whatever name they might exist—masonic lodges or others—and forbidding their establishment in future. All members of these societies had to pledge themselves not to form any masonic lodges or other secret societies in the future; and a declaration was required from all ranks of the army and from the civil service that neither soldiers nor officials should thenceforth belong to such organisations: “If any person refuses to make such a pledge, he shall no longer remain in the service.”

All the measures drawn up by the rescript of August were, however, put into effect only with regard to the closing of the masonic lodges. As to the secret societies, which had undoubtedly a political aim, they continued to develop in all tranquillity. “At that time,” writes a contemporary, “there was a triple police in St. Petersburg—namely, the governor general, the minister of the interior, and Count Araktcheiev; but that it did not bring forth any advantages is proved by the events of 1825.”

According to the remarks of the same contemporary, card-playing had then spread in St. Petersburg society to an incredible degree. “Certainly in ninety houses out of a hundred they play,” writes Danilevski, “and although the circle of my acquaintances has become very vast this year and I go out a great deal yet I never see people doing anything else than playing at cards. If one is invited to an evening party, it means cards, and I have hardly made my bow to the hostess before I find the cards in my hand. When one is asked out to dinner one sits down to whist before the meal is served. Card-playing occupies not only elderly people but young ones also. I think this has arisen partly from a defect in education which is in general observable in Russia—for when education finishes at seventeen, what store of ideas and knowledge, what passion for science can one expect to find in adults? This condition is further exaggerated by the fact that all political matters are banished from conversation: the government is suspicious, and spies are not unfrequently to be met with in society. The greater part of them are, however, known; some belong to old noble families, are decorated with orders, and wear chamberlains’ keys.”

The closing of the masonic lodges called forth the following deliberations from Danilevski: “As far as I know, masonry had no other object in Russia beyond benevolence and providing an agreeable way of passing time. The closing of the lodges deprived us of the only places where we assembled for anything else besides card-playing, for we have no society where cards do not constitute the principal or rather the only occupation. We are as yet so unversed in political matters that it is absurd for the government to fear that such subjects would furnish conversation at the masonic lodges. With us, notable persons have rarely been masons; at least none such have visited our lodge, which is usually full of people of the middle class, officers, civil-service employees, artists, a very few merchants, and a large percentage of literary men.”[b]

These of course are the words of a partisan and must be taken with a certain allowance. The same remark applies with full force to the testimony of the historian Turgeniev, whose association with the secret unions has already been mentioned, and whose comments on the subject, despite a certain bias, are full of interest. Turgeniev is speaking of the period just following that in which the government had taken action against the societies.[a]

Turgeniev’s Comment on the Secret Societies.

The government contributed much [he declares] by its suspicions and precautions, to strengthen the reports which were afloat concerning secret societies: to them all was suspect. A species of insurrection having broken out in a regiment of the guards, of which the emperor was head, the government thought they could trace it to the action of some society, whereas it was caused by the brutal and ridiculous conduct of a new colonel they had placed in command. That such was their conviction there was no doubt, because two of the officers of the insurrectionary companies were traduced before a council of war, and condemned, not only without any proof but with no specification of the crime or fault with which they were charged, whereas in reality neither the one nor the other officer had ever belonged to a secret society.

A rash Englishman took it into his head to go round the world and publish an account of his travels. He arrived at St. Petersburg, went over Russia, and thence to Siberia. There he was taken for a spy, and soon an order came from St. Petersburg to conduct him to the frontier. Even pious Protestant missionaries, propagating with their accustomed zeal Christian morals among savage peoples, were suspected by the government. They were hindered in the holy warfare they desired to carry on in the farthest and least civilised regions of the empire. The powers only saw in them emissaries of European liberalism.

The public for their part did not fail to take appearances for reality. That is the common propensity of the crowd in every country. How many times, before and after this epoch, might not men have been seen addressing themselves to those who were supposed to be at the head of such societies, and insistently asking to be admitted. In the army subalterns thus addressed their chiefs, and old generals sought their young subordinates to obtain the same favour. It might have been said with equal truth to both parties that no secret societies existed. Men’s minds, however, were all on the strain for political events. It was thought that some great change was to come soon, and everyone wanted to get an inkling of it. Restless curiosity was not the worst of the inconveniences caused to such associations. Doubtless, the evil was less due to societies than to persons who judged them after their deceitful appearances. Perhaps it was the fault of the political order which made secret societies necessary or, at any rate, inevitable; but it was nevertheless a serious matter which only publicity could remedy. The strong energy of a free man would advantageously replace the trickery and restlessness of a slave.

However, at the epoch of which we now speak, individuals were able to agitate in various ways, but without the least result. But if such a thing as an organised secret society did exist, how is it I did not know of it—I who knew many of those called liberals? I will give convincing proof of what I here maintain; I quote the words of Pestel, a man sent to the scaffold by the government not because he had committed some political crime but because he was considered as the most influential of those who were supposed to belong to secret associations. Pestel was in St. Petersburg just as my departure was decided on. He came to see me and spoke with regret of the dissolution of the Bien Public Society. “As for us” (the 2nd army), he said, “we have not observed the dissolution. It would be too disheartening. We are believed to be strong and numerous; I encourage the delusion. What would be said were it known that we are but five or six who form the association?” He ended by advising me to renounce my journey, or, at any rate to return as soon as possible and take up the abandoned work again. “I see quite well,” he said, “there is absolutely nothing left here of the old society, but at your house and a few others one can always believe in the existence of the society. Your departure will weaken this belief.”

A Tatar Woman

I explained that my health forced me to leave my affairs, and that, furthermore, I had little faith in the efficacy of secret societies. He seemed impressed by my reasoning and even agreed that I might be right on this last point.

His attention was much occupied with certain social theories that he and some of his friends had formulated. They thought to find in me one proselyte more. But they were disappointed, and Pestel was much surprised and disconcerted. These theories, which so many ardent imaginations had adopted, were no doubt excellent in intention, but they hardly promised great results. The genius, or something akin to it, in a Fourier, the zeal of an Owen, the utopianism of many others, might make proselytes and excite admiration; but the dreams of such men remained but dreams although they sometimes touched on the sublime. Only, in default of possible realisation, these theories might help humanity by directing the attention and effort of serious men towards certain things of which they had sufficiently appreciated the importance and utility. But to ensure that result more imagination was required. One of the fundamental points in the theory of Pestel and his friends was a universal distribution of territory, its cultivation to be determined by a supreme authority. At least they wanted to divide vast crown lands among those who had no property. What Elizabeth had guaranteed to all Englishmen—the right of being supported by the poor rates in default of other means of subsistence—they wanted to guarantee by means of the possession or at least the enjoyment of a certain quantity of land free for cultivation.

I tried to the best of my power to refute their arguments. It was not easy. The refutation of certain theories is difficult, and there are some whose very absurdity makes them unassailable. At last I came to think that Pestel and his friends were far more discontented with my opposition to their social theories than with my opinions on secret societies.[d]

LITERARY ACTIVITY OF THE PERIOD

The awakening of the Russian spirit was not manifested in political conspiracies alone. In science, in letters, and in art the reign of Alexander was an epoch of magnificent achievement. The intellectual like the liberal movement no longer bore the exotic and superficial character that had been apparent during the reign of Catherine; it penetrated to the deepest layers of society, gained constantly in power and extent, carried away the middle classes, and was propagated in the remotest provinces. The movement started in 1801 had not yet ceased, although the government failed to support the efforts it had itself aroused, and Alexander, embittered and disillusioned, had come to mistrust all intellectual manifestations. The increased severity of the censorship had not availed to prevent the formation of learned societies; literary journals and reviews continued to multiply.

During this period the Besieda, a literary club representing the classical tendencies, was formed, and the romanticists, Jukovski, Dachkov, Ouvarov, Pushkin, Bludov, and Prince Viazemski founded the Arzamas. At St. Petersburg appeared the Northern Post, the St. Petersburg Messenger, the Northern Messenger, the Northern Mercury, the Messenger of Zion, the Beehive, and the Democrat, in which latter Kropotkov inveighed against French customs and ideas, and in the Funeral Orison of my Dog Balabas congratulated the worthy animal on never having studied in a university, or read Voltaire.

Literary activity was, as usual, greatest at Moscow, where Karamzine was editing the European Messenger, Makarov the Moscow Mercury, and Glinka the Russian Messenger. In his journal Glinka endeavoured to excite a national feeling by first putting the people on their guard against all foreign influence, but more particularly that of France, and then arming them against Napoleon, teaching them the doctrine of self-immolation, and letting loose the furies of the “patriotic war.” When the Russian Messenger went out of existence after the completion of its task, the Son of the Soil, edited by de Gretch, took up the same work and carried the war against Napoleon beyond the frontiers. “Taste in advance,” it cried to the conqueror, “the immortality that you deserve; learn now the curses that posterity will shower on your name! You sit on your throne in the midst of thunder and flame as Satan sits in hell surrounded by death, devastation, and fire!” The Russian Invalide was founded in 1813 for the benefit of wounded and infirm soldiers. Even after the war-fever had somewhat subsided, and considerations less hostile to France were occupying the public mind, the literary movement still continued.

Almost all the writers of the day took part in the crusade against Gallomania and the belief in Napoleon’s omnipotence. Some had fought in the war against France and their writings were deeply tinged with patriotic feeling. Krilov, whose fables rank him not far below La Fontaine, wrote comedies also. In the School for Young Ladies and the Milliner’s Shop he ridiculed the exaggerated taste for everything French. Besides his classical tragedies Ozerov wrote Dmitri Donskoi, in which he recalled the struggles of Russia against the Tatars, and in a measure foretold the approaching conflict with a new invader. In the tragedy named after Pojarski, the hero of 1812, Kriukovski made allusions of the same order. The poet Jukovski put in verse the exploits of the Russians against Napoleon in 1806 and 1812, and Rostoptchin did not await the great crisis before opening out on the French the vials of his wrath.

Viewed in general, the literature of Alexander’s period marked the passage from the imitation of ancient writers and French classicists to the imitation of French and English masterpieces. The Besieda and the Arzamas were the headquarters of two rival armies which carried on in Russia a war similar to that waged in Paris by romantic and classical schools. Schiller, Goethe, Byron, and Shakespeare were as much the fashion in Russia as in France, and created there as close an approach to a literary scandal. While Ozerov, Batiuchkov, and Derjavine upheld the traditions of the old school, Jukovski gave to Russia a translation of Schiller’s Joan of Arc and of Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon; and Pushkin published Ruslan and Liudmilla, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Eugene Oniegin, the poem Poltava, and the tragedy Boris Godunov.

As in France the romantic movement had been accompanied by a brilliant revival of historical studies, so in Russia a fresh impulse was given to letters, and dramatists and novelists were inspired with a taste for national subjects by Karamzin’s History of the Russian Empire, a work remarkable for eloquence and charm [as our various extracts testify] though deficient in critical insight. Schlötzer had recently edited Nestor, the old annalist of Kiev and father of Russian history.[f]

Alexander I as a Patron of Literature

Protection and encouragement were shown to literature by Alexander I. Storck[i] writes as follows: “Rarely has any ruler shown such encouragement to literature as Alexander I. The remarkable literary merits of persons in the government service are rewarded by rises in the official ranks, by orders and pensions, whilst writers who are not in the government service and whose literary productions come to the knowledge of the emperor not unfrequently receive presents of considerable value. Under the existing conditions of the book trade, Russian authors cannot always count on a fitting recompense for large scientific works, and in such cases the emperor, having regard to these circumstances, sometimes grants the authors large sums for the publication of their works. Many writers send their manuscripts to the emperor, and if only they have a useful tendency he orders them to be printed at the expense of the cabinet and then usually gives the whole edition to the author.”

In view of the desire manifested by Karamzin to devote his labours to the composition of a full history of the Russian Empire, the emperor by a ukase of the 31st of October, 1803, bestowed upon him the title of historiographer and a yearly pension of 2,000 rubles.

During the reign of the emperor Paul, Alexander, in a letter to Laharpe dated September 27th, 1797, expressed his conviction of the necessity of translating useful books into the Russian language, in order “to lay a foundation by spreading knowledge and enlightenment in the minds of the people.” When he came to the throne, Alexander did not delay in accomplishing the intention he had already formed when he was czarevitch, and actually during the epoch of reforms a multitude of translations of works appeared, which had the evident object of inspiring interest in social, economic, and political questions and of communicating to Russian society the latest word of western science upon such questions.

In the establishment of the ministries the question of censorship was not overlooked; it was transferred to the ministry of public instruction. In consequence of this arrangement a special statute was issued (July 9th, 1804), “not in order to place any restraint,” as is stated in the minister’s report, “upon the freedom of thought and of writing, but solely so as to take requisite measures against the abuse of such freedom.” The entire statute contained forty-seven paragraphs—a circumstance worthy of attention if we take into consideration the fact that the censorship statute presented in the year 1826 by A. S. Shishkov had grown to 230 paragraphs. According to the statute of Alexander I the censorship was designed chiefly to “furnish society with books and works contributing to the true enlightenment of minds and to the formation of moral qualities, and to remove books and works of contrary tendencies.” The censorship was entrusted to the university, constituting in its general jurisdiction the then newly organised department of the ministry of public instruction, which had the chief direction of schools. The basis of the functions of the censorship thus constituted was found in the three provisions following:

(1) Watchfulness that in the books and periodicals published, and in the pieces represented on the stage “there shall be nothing against religion, the government, morality, or the personal honour of any citizen.” (2) Care that in the prohibition of the publication or issue of books and works the committee shall be “guided by a wise indulgence, setting aside all biased interpretation of the works or of any part of them which might seem to merit prohibition; and wisdom to remember that when such parts seem subject to any doubt or have a double meaning, it is better to interpret them in the manner most favourable to the author than to prosecute him.” (3) “A discreet and wise investigation of truths concerning faith, mankind, the position of the citizen, the law, and all branches of the administration, are to be treated by the censorship not only in the most lenient manner, but should enjoy entire liberty of publication, as contributing to the progress of enlightenment.”

Such was the aspect of the censorship and statute which remained unchanged for more than twenty years, that is during the whole reign of the emperor Alexander. It was only from the year 1817, from the establishment of the ministry of public worship and of public instruction, that the censorship acquired a particularly irksome tendency which was in opposition to the liberal spirit of the statute: the most complete intolerance, fanaticism, and captiousness, which had been absent at the commencement of Alexander’s reign, then made their appearance.

In January, 1818 the emperor Alexander came for a short time to St. Petersburg, and Karamzin took advantage of his stay in order to present to him the eight volumes of the History of the Russian Empire which he had just published. “He received me in his private apartments, and I had the happiness of dining with him,” wrote Karamzin to his friend I. I. Dmitriev. “On the 1st of February my History of the Russian Empire was on sale; the edition was of three thousand copies, and in spite of the high price at which the work was sold (55 rubles, paper money, per copy), a month later not a copy was left at the booksellers.”[b]

FAILURE OF THE POLISH EXPERIMENT

The constitution granted to Poland in 1815, based the government on a tripartite division of power; the three estates of the realm being the king, a senate, and a house of representatives—the latter two being comprehended under the name of a diet. The executive was vested in the king, and in functionaries by him appointed. The crown was hereditary; it was the prerogative of the king to declare war, convoke, prorogue, or dissolve the diet. He was empowered to appoint a viceroy, who, unless a member of the royal family, was to be a Pole. The king or viceroy was assisted by a council of state and five responsible ministers, their several departments being instruction, justice, interior and police, war, finance. These five ministers were subordinate to the president of the council. Considering the exhaustion, humiliation, and misery to which Poland had been reduced, such a constitution was apparently a great boon, for it guaranteed civil, political, and religious freedom; but by the very nature of things it was foredoomed to destruction.

The first Polish diet assembled at Warsaw on the 27th of March, 1818. The grand duke Constantine, commander-in-chief of the Polish army, was elected a deputy by the faubourg of Praga, and during the session was obliged to renounce his privilege as a senator, because, by the terms of the constitution, no person could sit in both houses. He was elected by a majority of 103 votes to 6, an evident proof that the new reign had excited the liveliest hopes. The emperor arrived at Warsaw on the 13th of March; he devoted himself laboriously to the examination of state affairs, and on the 27th he opened the diet in person with a speech in the French language. He said, “the organisation which existed in vigorous maturity in your country permitted the instant establishment of what I have given you, by putting into operation the principles of those liberal institutions which have never ceased to be the object of my solicitude, and whose salutary influence I hope by the aid of God to disseminate through all the countries which He has confided to my care. Thus you have afforded me the means of showing my country what I had long since prepared for her, and what she shall obtain when the elements of a work so important shall have attained their necessary development.”

House of the Romanov Czars

There is no reason to doubt that Alexander cherished these intentions in his own sanguine but impractical way. The enfranchisement of the serfs of Esthonia, undertaken in 1802 and completed in 1816, and that of the serfs of Courland in 1817, exhibit the same principles. And when in 1819 the deputies of the Livonian nobility submitted to the approbation of the emperor a plan to pursue the same course with the serfs of their province, the following was his remarkable reply: “I am delighted to see that the nobility of Livonia have fulfilled my expectations. You have set an example that ought to be imitated. You have acted in the spirit of our age, and have felt that liberal principles alone can form the basis of the people’s happiness.”

“Such,” says Schnitzler, “was constantly, during nearly twenty years, the language of Alexander. He deeply mourned the entire absence of all guarantees for the social well-being of the empire. His regret was marked in his reply to Madame de Staël, when she complimented him on the happiness of his people, who, without a constitution, were blessed with such a sovereign: ‘I am but a lucky accident.’” After 1815 he was no longer even that.

A year had hardly elapsed from the time when Alexander had addressed the words we have quoted to the diet at Warsaw, ere the Poles began to complain that the constitution was not observed in its essential provisions; that their viceroy Zaionczek had but the semblance of authority, whilst all the real power was in the hands of the grand duke Constantine, and of Novosiltzov the Russian commissioner. The bitterness of their discontent was in proportion with the ardour of their short-lived joy. Russian despotism reverted to its essential conditions; the liberty of the press was suspended; and in 1819 the national army was dissolved. On the other hand, the spirit of opposition became so strong in the diet, that in 1820, a measure relating to criminal procedure, which was pressed forward with all the force of government influence, was rejected by a majority of 120 to 3. Thenceforth there was nothing but mutual distrust between Poland and Russia.

CONSTITUTIONAL PROJECTS

The institutions which Alexander had given to Poland worked no happy results, and those which he designed for Russia would have been little better. He failed to accomplish even the good which he might have effected without organic changes. But he felt himself arrested by innumerable difficulties. He often wanted instruments to carry out his will, oftener still the firmness to support them against court cabals. The immense distances to be traversed, which, according to Custine, the emperor Nicholas feels to be one of the plagues of his empire, presented the same obstacle to Alexander. Again, his desire to exercise European influence distracted his attention from his proper work at home, and the empire sank back into its old routine. Discouraged at last, and awakening as he grew older from some of the illusions of his youth, he gave way to indolence more and more. He saw himself alone, standing opposed to an immense festering corruption; in despair he ceased to struggle against it; and in the latter portion of his reign he grievously neglected the care of his government.

The helm thus deserted by the pilot passed into the hands of General Araktcheiev, a shrewd, active man, devoted to business, perhaps also well-intentioned, but a Russian of the old school, without the necessary enlightenment, without political probity—arbitrary, imperious, and enthralled by qualities and notions inimical to progress; governed, moreover, by unworthy connections of a particular kind. Under the rule of Araktcheiev the censorship became more severe than ever. Foreign books were admitted with difficulty, and were subject to tyrannical restrictions; many professors of the new university of St. Petersburg were subjected to a despotic and galling inquisition; others were required most rigidly to base their course of instructions upon a programme printed and issued by the supreme authority. Freemasonry was suppressed. Foreign travellers were surrounded with troublesome and vexatious formalities. Many rigorous regulations, which had been long disused and almost forgotten, were revived. In short, Araktcheiev exercised with intolerable severity a power which he derived from a master who carried gentleness to an extreme of weakness—who loved to discuss the rights of humanity, and whose heart bled for its sufferings.

THE MILITARY COLONIES (1819 A.D.)

[1819 A.D.]

It was by the advice of Araktcheiev that military colonies were established in Russia in 1819. The system was not new, for Austria had already adopted it on some of her frontiers; but its introduction into Russia was a novelty from which great results were expected, and which neighbouring states regarded with much uneasiness. The plan was to quarter the soldiers upon the crown-peasants, build military villages according to a fixed plan, apportion a certain quantity of field to every house, and form a statute-book, according to which these new colonies should be governed. The plan at once received the approbation of the czar. It was the intention of Araktcheiev, by means of these colonies, to reduce the expense entailed by the subsistence of the army, and to compel the soldier to contribute to his own maintenance by cultivating the soil; to strengthen the ranks by a reserve picked from among the crown-peasants, equal in number to the colony of soldiers; to furnish the soldier with a home, in which his wife and children might continue to dwell when the exigencies of war called him away; and to increase the population, and with it the cultivation of the soil, in a land where hands only are wanting to change many a steppe into a garden, many a scattered village into a thriving town.

Russian colonies were thus established in the governments of Novgorod, Mohilev, Kharkov, Kiev, Podolia, and Kherson; that is to say, in the neighbourhood of Poland, Austria, and Turkey. Political and military considerations had combined to fix the choice of localities for these colonies. In consequence of the vast dimensions of the Russian Empire, troops raised in the north and west can only reach the southern provinces after long intervals; and if, on any emergency, Russia should wish to concentrate a large part of her forces in the neighbourhood of the southern and western frontiers, such a concentration, it was thought, would be greatly facilitated by the fact of military colonies, with a large population, being already on the spot. The villages destined for the reception of military colonies were all to be inhabited by crown-peasants; these people were now relieved from the duties they had been accustomed to pay to the government, in consideration of their quartering men in their houses. All peasants more than fifty years of age were selected to be so-called head colonists, or master-colonists. Every master-colonist received forty acres of land, for which he had to maintain a soldier and his family, and to find fodder for a horse, if a corps of cavalry happened to be quartered in the village. The soldier, on his part, was bound to assist the colonist in the cultivation of his field and the farm labours generally, whenever his military duties did not occupy the whole day. The soldier, who in this way became domiciliated in the family, received the name “military peasant.” The officers had the power of choosing the soldiers who were to be quartered upon the master-colonists. If the colonist had several sons, the oldest became his adjunct; the second was enrolled among the reserve; the third might become a military peasant; the others were enrolled as colonists or pupils. Thus, in the new arrangements, two entirely different elements were fused together, and one population was, so to speak, engrafted upon another.

The labour of these agricultural soldiers is of course dependent upon the will of the officers, for they can only attend to agricultural work when freed from military duty. The man himself continues half peasant, half soldier, until he has served for five-and-twenty years, if he be a Russian, or twenty years if he be a Pole. At the expiration of this time he is at liberty to quit the service, and his place is filled up from the reserve. Beside the house of each master-colonist stands another dwelling constructed in exactly the same manner, and occupied by the reserve-man, who may be regarded as a double of the soldier. He is selected by the colonel of the regiment from among the peasants, and is generally a son or relation of the master-colonist. The reserve-man is instructed in all the duties appertaining to the soldier’s profession, and is educated in every particular, so that he may be an efficient substitute. If the agricultural soldier dies, or falls in battle, his reserve-man immediately takes his place. The colonist now takes the place of the reserve-man, who in his turn is succeeded by the pupil. The master-colonist, peasant-soldier, and reserve-man, may all choose their wives at pleasure, and they are encouraged to marry. The women, on the other hand, are allowed to marry within the limits of their colony, but not beyond it. The sons of the master-colonists, soldiers, or reserve-men, between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, are called “cantonists.” They are drilled like soldiers, and occasionally attend schools. The children between the ages of eight and thirteen visit the school of the village in which their parents dwell, and are exercised in the use of arms on alternate days. Like the cantonists, they wear uniforms, and are looked upon as future soldiers. All male children are sent to school, where, by the method of reciprocal education, they are taught to read, write, and cipher, alternately with their military studies. They are taught to recite a kind of catechism, setting forth the duties of the soldier; they learn the use of the sabre; are practised in riding, and, when they have attained the age of seventeen years, are mustered in the headquarters of the regiment, and divided into corps, those who distinguish themselves by attention and diligence being appointed officers. The several component parts of a colony are as follows:

1. The head colonist—the master of the house and possessor of the estate. 2. His assistant, who joins him in the cultivation of his farm. 3. The military peasant, who likewise takes part in agricultural labour. 4. The reserve-man, who supplies the place of the soldier in case of need. 5. The cantonist, between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. 6. The boys, from eight to thirteen years old. 7. Male children under the age of eight years. 8. The female population. 9. The invalids.

The colonies in the south of Russia comprise 380 villages in the provinces of Kherson, Kharkov, and Iekaterainoslav. The crown has here 30,000 peasants. Every village contains two or three squadrons, according to its size; thus they contain altogether 80,000 men. These military districts, as the regions are called in which the colonies occur, are so strictly divided from the remaining portions of the provinces, that no man can enter them without a special passport, granted by the military authorities. Their constitution is entirely military, even the postal service being executed by soldiers. At every station a subaltern receives the order for post-horses and inspects it; another soldier harnesses the horses; a third greases the wheels; and a fourth mounts the box as coachman. As soon as the military coat appears in sight, every peasant on the high-road stops, plants his hands stiffly against his sides, and stands in a military attitude of “attention.”

The laws are administered in the first instance by a detachment from every squadron, one of the officers acting as president. From the decision of this tribunal an appeal can be made to the regimental council, which is composed of the colonel, two captains, and six deputies from among the colonists. The judgments of this court are laid before the commandant-in-chief of the colonies, against whose decision neither soldiers nor colonists may protest, officers alone having the privilege of appealing to the emperor. In the headquarters of every regiment a copy of the code of laws is kept, and in most military villages churches are to be found, where a priest, who belonged to the church before the village was transformed into a military colony, performs the service.

The success of the military colonies in Russia fell far short of the expectations of their founders. To the unfortunate crown serfs they brought an intolerable aggravation of their wretchedness, by making them feel their slavery even in their homes and their domestic affections. The consequence was seen in the madness of their revenge on several occasions when they broke out into rebellion, as for instance at Novgorod, in 1832. “Nothing,” says Dr. Lee, “could be sold without the knowledge of the officers in these military colonies. It is said that when a hen lays an egg, it is necessary to make an entry of the fact in a register kept for this and other equally important purposes. I was told that when a priest was speaking to some of these peasants about the punishments of hell, they answered they dreaded them not, because a worse hell than that in which they were doomed to pass their whole lives here, could not possibly exist.

“The military colonies,” Lee continues, “please one at first sight from the order and cleanliness everywhere prevailing in them; but their population is said to be wretched in the highest degree. When the emperor Alexander was here, some years ago, he went round visiting every house; and on every table he found a dinner prepared, one of the principal articles of which consisted of a young pig roasted. The prince Volkhonski suspected there was some trick, and cut off the tail of the pig and put in his pocket. On entering the next house the pig was presented, but without the tail, upon which Prince Volkhonski said to the emperor, ‘I think this is an old friend.’ The emperor demanded his meaning, when he took out the tail from his pocket and applied it to the part from which it had been removed. The emperor did not relish the jest, and it was supposed this piece of pleasantry led to his disgrace. A more effectual, though bold and dangerous method of exposing to the emperor the deceptions carried on throughout the military colonies under Count Araktcheiev could not have been adopted than that which Prince Volkhonski had recourse to on this occasion. From that time Count Araktcheiev became his bitter enemy.”

ALEXANDER AND THE GREEK UPRISING

[1822 A.D.]

We have now touched upon all that is worthy of note in Alexander’s home policy during the last ten years of his reign. That portion of his life was spent in perpetual motion and perpetual agitation to little or no good purpose, whilst his proper functions were delegated to Count Araktcheiev, whose name was a word of terror to everyone in Russia. Absorbed by affairs foreign to the interests of his empire, Alexander was consistent or persevering in nothing but his efforts to enforce the dark, stagnant policy of Austria, which had become that of the Holy Alliance. He was present at the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, and zealously participated in all the repressive measures concerted there. He was the soul of the deliberations held at the latter place in 1822, and whilst he refused aid to the Greeks in their rebellion against their “legitimate sovereign,” the sultan, he was all but inclined to use constraint to his ally, France, to compel her, in spite of the opposition of England, to take upon herself the execution of the violent measures resolved on in behalf of the execrable Ferdinand of Spain. A speech made at this congress to Châteaubriand, the French plenipotentiary, has been praised by some of the emperor’s biographers for its “noble sentiments.” To us it seems well worthy of record for its unconscious sophistry and signal display of self-delusion.

“I am very happy,” said the emperor to Châteaubriand, “that you came to Verona, because you may now bear witness to the truth. Would you have believed, as our enemies are so fond of asserting, that the alliance is only a word intended to cover ambition? That might have received a colour of truth under the old order of things, but now all private interests disappear when the civilisation of the world is imperilled. Henceforward there can be no English, French, Russian, Prussian, or Austrian policy; there can only be a general policy, involving the salvation of all, admitted in common by kings and peoples. It is for me, the first of all, to declare my appreciation of the principles on which I founded the Holy Alliance. An opportunity presents itself; it is the Greek insurrection. Certainly no event appeared more adapted to my personal interests, to those of my subjects, and to the feelings and prejudices of the Russians, than a religious war against Turkey; but in the troubles of the Peloponnesus I saw revolutionary symptoms, and from that moment I held aloof. What has not been done to dissolve the alliance? Attempts have been made by turns to excite my cupidity, or to wound my self-love; I have been openly outraged; the world understood me very badly if it supposes that my principles could be shaken by vanities, or could give way before resentment. No, no; I will never separate myself from the monarchs with whom I am united. It should be permitted to kings to form public alliances, to protect themselves against secret associations. What temptations can be offered to me? What need have I to extend my empire? Providence has not placed under my command eight hundred thousand soldiers to satisfy my ambition, and to conserve those principles of order on which society must repose.”

This was not the language of “noble sentiment,” but of an intellect narrowed by sinister influences, perverted to the views of a most sordid policy, and flattering itself on its own debasement with the maudlin cant of philanthropy.

We may well conceive that it was not without inward pain and self-reproach that the benevolent Alexander stifled in his heart the voice that rose in favour of the Greeks, and resisted the wishes of his people, who were animated by a lively sympathy for their co-religionists. That sympathy was manifested as strongly as it could be under this despotic government, where every outward demonstration is interdicted, unless when specially commanded or permitted by authority. They could not see without surprise the head of the so-styled orthodox church enduring the outrages of the infidels, and looking on unmoved whilst one of her chief pastors was hung at the porch of his church, and multitudes of her children were massacred. These Greeks had of late been regarded as under the protection of Russia; she was their old ally—nay, more, their accomplice, who had more than once instigated them to break their chains. The supineness of the emperor under such circumstances mortified the nobility, shocked the clergy, and was a subject of sincere affliction to the people, for whom, in their debased condition, religious sentiments held the place of political emotions.

High and low obeyed, however; murmurs were suppressed; but the Russians failed not to attribute to the wrath of God the misfortunes which befel Alexander, amongst which was the malady with which he was afflicted in 1824. It began with erysipelas in the leg, which soon spread upwards, and was accompanied with fever and delirium. For a time his life was in danger, and the people, who sincerely loved him, believed that they saw in this a punishment from on high because he had abandoned an orthodox nation.

THE GREAT INUNDATION OF 1824

[1824 A.D.]

Another misfortune was a frightful calamity which befel St. Petersburg in 1824. The mouth of the Neva, opening westward into the gulf of Finland, is exposed to the violent storms that often accompany the autumnal equinox. They suddenly drive the waters of the gulf into the bed of the river, which then casts forth its accumulated floods upon the low quarters on both its banks. It may be conceived how terrible is the destruction which the unchained waters make in a city built upon a drained marsh, on the eve of a northern winter of seven months’ duration. There were terrific inundations in 1728, 1729, 1735, 1740, 1742, and in 1777, a few days before the birth of Alexander; but the worst of all was that which occurred on the 19th of November, 1824, a year before his death. A storm blowing from the west and southwest with extreme violence, forced back the waters of the Neva, and drove those of the gulf into it.[e]

At eight o’clock in the morning the waters began to rise rapidly and had soon submerged all the lower parts of the town. On the Nevski Prospect the water had reached the Troitski Perenlok, and by twelve three parts of the town were submerged, owing to a southwesterly wind which rose to a violent tempest. At a quarter to three the waters began suddenly to subside. The emperor was profoundly moved by the awful calamity which took place before his eyes, and in the gloomy frame of mind that had possession of him he regarded it as a punishment for his sins. As soon as the water had so far subsided as to make it possible to drive through the streets he set off for the Galernaia (in the lower part of the town). There a terrible picture of destruction was unfolded before him. Visibly affected he stopped and got out of the carriage; he stood for a few moments without speaking, the tears flowing down his cheeks: the people, sobbing and weeping, surrounded him: “God is punishing us for our sins,” said someone in the crowd. “No, for mine,” answered the emperor sorrowfully, and he himself began to give orders about arranging temporary refuge and affording assistance to the sufferers. On the next day, the 8th (20th) of November, Count Araktcheiev, Alexander’s favourite, wrote the following letter to the emperor:

“I could not sleep all night, knowing what your state of mind must be, for I am convinced how much your majesty must be now suffering from the calamity of yesterday. But God certainly sometimes sends such misfortunes in order that His chosen ones may show in an unusual degree their compassionate care for the unfortunate. Your majesty will of course do so in the present case. For this money is necessary and money without delay, in order to give assistance, not to the well-to-do but to the poorest. Your subjects must help you, and therefore I venture to submit my idea to you.

“The wise dispositions that you made, batushka,[65] with regard to my insignificant labours have constituted a tolerably considerable capital. In my position I have not required to use any of this capital even as table money, and now I ask as a reward that a million may be separated from the capital and employed in assisting the poor people. God will certainly give his help in this matter to the benefit of the country and the glory of your majesty, and bring about a still better means for its accomplishment. Batushka, order that a committee may be formed of compassionate people, in order that they may without delay occupy themselves with the relief of the poorest. They will glorify your name, and I, hearing it, shall thus enjoy the greatest pleasure on earth.”

The emperor answered Count Araktcheiev the same day in a few gracious lines, full of heartfelt gratitude: “We are in complete agreement in our ideas, dear Alexis Andreivitch. Your letter has comforted me inexpressibly, for it is impossible that I should not be deeply grieved at the calamity of yesterday, and especially at the thought of those who have perished or who mourn for relatives. Come to me to-morrow so that we may arrange everything. Ever your sincerely affectionate Alexander.”

The emperor sent a note of the following content to Adjutant-General Diebitsch: “In order to afford effectual relief to the sufferers from the inundation of the 7th of November, and on account of the destruction of the bridges and the difficulties of communication between the various parts of the town, the following military governors are temporarily appointed under the direction of the military governor-general, Count Miloradovitch: for Vasili Oetroo, Adjutant-General Benkendorv; for the St. Petersburg side, Adjutant-General Komarovski; and for the Viboz side, Adjutant-General Depreradovitch.”

Tverski Gate, Moscow

On the 8th of November the emperor sent for the newly appointed military governors and declared his will to them—that the most speedy and effectual assistance should be given to the unfortunate sufferers from the awful catastrophe. Count Komarovski, in describing the reception given to him and the other military governors, says that tears were observed in the emperor’s eyes. “I am sure that you share my feelings of compassion,” continued Alexander; “here are your instructions, which have been hastily drawn up—your hearts will complete them. Go from here straight to the minister of finance who has orders to give each of you 100,000 rubles to begin with.” According to Komarovski the emperor spoke with such feeling and eloquence that all the assembled governors were deeply touched.

At the time of the inundation in a space of five hours about 5,000 persons perished and 3,609 domestic animals; 324 houses were destroyed or carried away, and 3,581 damaged; besides this pavements, foot ways, quays, bridges, etc., were either destroyed or damaged. Considerable destruction and damage was also occasioned in the environs of the capital, on the Petershov road, in old Petershov, Oranienbaum, and Kronstadt, along the northern shore. More than 100 persons perished in these places, while 114 buildings were destroyed and 187 damaged.

On the 22nd of November the emperor assisted at a requiem service in the Kazan cathedral for those who had perished during the inundation. The historian Karamzin writes that the people as they listened to the requiem wept and gazed at the czar.[b]

THE CLOSE OF ALEXANDER’S REIGN

The czar, deeply affected by the sad spectacles he had witnessed, never recovered from the shock. This increased his disgust of life and the heavy melancholy that had of late being growing upon him. The whole aspect of Europe gave fearful tokens that the policy of the Holy Alliance was false and untenable; it was everywhere the subject of execration, and its destruction was the aim of an almost universal conspiracy, extending even into Alexander’s own dominions. Poland inspired him with deep alarm, and his native country, notwithstanding her habits of immobility, seemed ripe for convulsions. Thus his public life was filled with disappointment and care, and his private life was deeply clouded with horrors.

The diet of Warsaw had become so refractory, that in 1820 Alexander had found it necessary to suspend it, in violation of the constitution given by himself; and though he opened a new diet in 1824, he did so under such restrictions, that the Poles rightly considered it a mere mockery of representative forms.

Russia herself was by no means tranquil. In the year 1824 insurrections of the peasants occurred in several governments, and especially in that of Novgorod, in dangerous vicinity to the first-founded of the military colonies. The latter themselves shared the general discontent, and threatened to become a fearful focus of rebellion, as was actually the case in 1832. There existed also in Russia other centres of disaffection, the existence of which might have been long before known to Alexander, but for his culpable habit of allowing petitions to collect in heaps in his cabinet without even breaking their seals. He, however, learned the fact on his last journey into Poland in June, 1825, or immediately after his return.[66] He then received the first intimation of the conspiracy which had for many years been plotting against himself and against the existing order of things in Russia—a conspiracy which, as many believe, involved the perpetration of regicide. It is a curious fact, but one by no means unparalleled, that in a country where the police is so active, such a plot should have remained for years undetected. In 1816, several young Russians who had served in the European campaigns of the three preceding years, and who had directed their attention to the secret associations which had so greatly contributed to the liberation of Germany, conceived the idea of establishing similar associations in Russia; and this was the origin of that abortive insurrection which broke out in St. Petersburg on the day when the troops were required to take the oath of allegiance to Alexander’s successor.

These details would be sufficient of themselves to account for the melancholy that haunted Alexander in the later years of his reign, and which was painfully manifest in his countenance. But he had to undergo other sufferings.

[1825 A.D.]

He was not more than sixteen years of age when his grandmother, Catherine II, had married him to the amiable and beautiful princess Maria of Baden, then scarcely fifteen.[67] The match was better assorted than is usually the case in the highest conditions of life, but it was not a happy one. It might have been so if it had been delayed until the young couple were of more mature years, and had not the empress unwisely restricted their freedom after marriage, and spoiled her grandson as a husband by attempting to make him a good one in obedience to her orders. Moreover, the tie of offspring was wanting which might have drawn the parents’ hearts together, for two daughters, born in the first two years of their union, died early. Alexander formed other attachments, one of which with the countess Narishkin, lasted eleven years, until it was dissolved by her inconstancy. She had borne him three children; only one was left, a girl as beautiful as her mother, who was now the sole joy of her father’s sad heart. But the health of Sophia Narishkin was delicate, and he was compelled to part with her, that she might be removed to a milder climate. She returned too soon, and died on the eve of her marriage, in her eighteenth year. The news was communicated to Alexander one morning when he was reviewing his guard. “I receive the reward of my deeds,” were the first words that escaped from his agonised heart.

Elizabeth, whose love had survived long years of neglect, had tears to shed for the daughter of her rival, and none sympathised more deeply than she with the suffering father. He began to see in her what his people had long seen, an angel of goodness and resignation; his affection for her revived, and he strove to wean her from the bitter recollections of the past by his constant and devoted attention. But long-continued sorrows had undermined Elizabeth’s health, and her physicians ordered that she should be removed to her native air. She refused, however, to comply with this advice, declaring that the wife of the emperor of Russia should die nowhere else than in his dominions. It was then proposed to try the southern provinces of the empire, and Alexander selected for her residence the little town of Taganrog, on the sea of Azov, resolving himself to make all the arrangements for her reception in that remote and little frequented spot. A journey of 1800 versts, after the many other journeys he had already made since the opening of the year, was a fatigue too great for him to sustain without injury, suffering as he still was from erysipelas; but he was accustomed to listen to no advice on the subject of his movements, and two or three thousand versts were nothing in his estimation; besides, on this occasion, in the very fatigue of travelling he sought his repose: he would fulfil a duty which was to appease his conscience. He quitted St. Petersburg in the beginning of September, 1825, preceding the empress by several days. His principal travelling companions were Prince Volkhonski, one of the friends of his youth of whom we have already heard; his aide-de-camp general, Baron Diebitsch, a distinguished military man who had been made over to him by the king of Prussia; and his physician, Sir James Wylie, who had been about his person for thirty years, and was at the head of the army medical department.

The journey was prosperous, and was accomplished with Alexander’s usual rapidity in twelve days, the travellers passing over 150 versts a day; but his mind was oppressed with gloomy forebodings, and these were strengthened by the sight of a comet; for though brought up by a philosophic grandmother, and by a free-thinking tutor, he was by no means exempt from superstition. “Ilia,” he called out to his old and faithful coachman, “have you seen the new star? Do you know that a comet always presages misfortune? But God’s will be done!” A very favourable change having taken place in the empress’s health in Taganrog, Alexander ventured to leave her early in October, for a short excursion through the Crimea. On the 26th of that month Dr. Robert Lee, family physician to Count Vorontzov was one of the emperor’s guests at Alupka. He relates that at dinner Alexander repeatedly expressed how much he was pleased with Orianda, where he had been that day, and stated that it was his determination to have a palace built there as expeditiously as possible. “To my amazement,” says Dr. Lee, “he said after a pause, ‘When I give in my demission, I shall return and fix myself at Orianda, and wear the costume of the Taurida.’ Not a word was uttered when this extraordinary resolution was announced, and I thought that I must have misunderstood the emperor; but this could not have been, for in a short time, when Count Vorontzov proposed that the large open flat space of ground to the westward of Orianda should be converted into pleasure-grounds for his majesty, he replied: ‘I wish this to be purchased for General Diebitsch, as it is right that the chief of my état-major and I should be neighbours.’”

During the latter part of his tour in the Crimea, Alexander had some threatenings of illness, but peremptorily refused all medical treatment. He returned to Taganrog on the 17th of November, with evident symptoms of a severe attack of the bilious remittent fever of the Crimea. He persisted in rejecting medical aid until it was too late, and died on the 1st of December. For a long time the belief prevailed throughout Europe that he had been assassinated; but it is now established beyond question that his death was a natural one. The empress survived him but five months.

Alexander’s last days were embittered by fresh disclosures brought to him by General Count de Witt, respecting the conspiracy by which, if the official report is to be believed, he was doomed to assassination. From that time he declared himself disgusted with life. Once when Sir James Wylie was pressing him to take some medicine, “My friend,” said Alexander, “it is the state of my nerves to which you must attend; they are in frightful disorder.”—“Alas!” rejoined the physician, “that happens more frequently to kings than to ordinary men.”—“Yes,” said the emperor, with animation, “but with me in particular there are many special reasons, and at the present hour more so than ever.” Some days afterwards, when his brain was almost delirious, the czar gazed intently on the doctor, his whole countenance manifesting intense fear. “Oh, my friend,” he exclaimed, “what an act, what a horrible act! The monsters! the ungrateful monsters! I designed nothing but their happiness.”[e]

“It is difficult to represent the condition of St. Petersburg during the last years of the reign of the emperor Alexander,” writes a contemporary. “It was as though enveloped in a moral fog; Alexander’s gloomy views, more sad than stern, were reflected in its inhabitants. Many people said: What does he want more? He stands at the zenith of power. Each one explained after his own fashion the inconsolable grief of the emperor. For a man who must live to all eternity, who was famed as the friend of liberty, and who had out of necessity become her oppressor, it was grievous to think that he must renounce the love of his contemporaries and the praise of posterity. Many other circumstances and some family ones also weighed on his soul. The last years of Alexander’s life,” writes in conclusion the eye-witness of these sorrowful days, “may be termed a prolonged eclipse.”

The Death of Alexander I

On the 1st of December, 1825, a truly great misfortune fell upon Russia: the best of European sovereigns had ceased to exist. When he vanished from the political arena, only the finer side of his life came into view; the remainder was given over to oblivion. A contemporary who was at the same time a poet writes: “You see arising before you that beautiful spirit that was welcomed with such joy in 1801; you see that glorious czar to whom Russia owes the years 1813 and 1814; you see the comforter of the people after last year’s inundation; you see that gracious, benevolent man who was so amiable in personal intercourse,” and who, in the words of Speranski, will ever remain a true charmer. There was much that was ideally beautiful in his soul, he sincerely loved and desired good, and attained to it. There was indeed cause for grief, particularly in view of the uncertainty of the future that awaited Russia, which, according to the picturesque expression of a Russian writer after the death of Alexander, had, as it were, to enter a cold, uninviting passage to a long dark tunnel. This was a feeling that was shared by many contemporaries.

Independently of the grief which fell upon all Russia, for the persons who had surrounded the deceased monarch at his death a truly tragic moment had approached. Far from the capital and from all the members of the imperial family, in an isolated town (Taganrog) of the Russian empire, at two thousand versts from the centre of government the terrible question arose: Who would now be emperor, to whom was the oath of allegiance to be taken, and by whom in future would orders issue? Moreover, it was amidst the ramifications of a vast conspiracy and a universal fermentation that these questions presented themselves.

“The sphinx, undivined even to the grave,” as the poet justly called Alexander, had not revealed his royal will, and even in view of the inevitable end he had not considered it necessary to refer by a single word or hint to the question that was of such crucial interest to the welfare of Russia. On the contrary, during the last days of his life Alexander had as though consciously set aside all earthly matters and died like a private individual who has closed his accounts with the world. Therefore it is not surprising that he failed to indicate the successor he had chosen; being satisfied with the dispositions he had previously made in secret, he seemed to think: “After my death they will open my will and testament and will learn to whom Russia belongs.”

During the life of Alexander no one knew of the existence of the act naming the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch heir to the throne except three state dignitaries: Count Araktcheiev, Prince A. N. Galitzin, and the archbishop of Moscow, Philaret. By a fatal concurrence of circumstances, not one of them was present at the decease of the emperor at Taganrog. Of the three persons of confidence who were with Alexander, Adjutant-general Prince Volkonski, Baron Diebitsch, and Tchernichev, not one was aware that the elder brother’s right to the succession of the throne had been transferred to the second. Adjutant-general Diebitsch afterwards said to Danilevski: “The emperor, who had confided many secrets to me, never, however, told me a word of this. Once we were together at the settlement, and he, directing the conversation to the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch, said, “You must support him.” I concluded from these words only that, judging from the age of the grand duke, he might be expected to outlive the emperor and the czarevitch, in which case he would naturally be their successor.”

Such were the limits of the knowledge that Diebitsch had at his disposal in Taganrog as the question of the succession. Nor did Prince Volkonski know anything about the matter. Even the empress Elizabeth Alexievna was in the same ignorance regarding the rejection of the grand duke Constantine Pavlovitch.

“When the illness of Alexander at Taganrog no longer gave any hopes of recovery,” relates Diebitsch, “Prince Volkonski advised me to ask the empress to whom, in case of the emperor’s death, I as chief of his majesty’s general staff must address myself, for my position was one of very great difficulty; I was left chief of the army at a time when instances of a conspiracy were being disclosed. I could not decide upon personally proposing such a question to the empress, fearing to distress her, besides which, although I enjoyed her favour, yet it was not to such a degree as Prince Volkonski, who was the friend of the imperial family; therefore I urgently requested him to take upon himself this explanation with the empress. He only consented under the condition that I should be present. We went together into the room where the emperor was lying unconscious, and Prince Volkonski, going up to Elizabeth Alexievna said to her that I, as chief of the staff, requested her to say to whom, in case of misfortune, I was to address myself? ‘Is the emperor then so ill that there is no hope?’ asked the empress. ‘God alone can help and save the emperor: only the tranquillity and security of Russia demand that the traditional forms should be observed,’ answered the prince Volkonski.

“‘Of course in case of an unhappy event the grand duke Constantine Pavlovitch must be referred to,’ said the empress. The words plainly proved the empress’ ignorance as to who was named heir to the throne. Prince Volkonski and I supposed that the late emperor Alexander had made a will, for he had an envelope with a paper in it always with him, which never left him. When we opened it after his death we found that it contained some written-out prayers.”

Such being the position of affairs it only remained for Adjutant-general Diebitsch to inform the czarevitch Constantine Pavlovitch in Warsaw of the melancholy event, as the person who, according to the law of succession, had become emperor of all the Russias. It was then that Diebitsch wrote a letter to the empress Marie Feodorovna in which he said in conclusion: “I humbly await the commands of our new lawful sovereign, the emperor Constantine Pavlovitch.” The act of the decease of the emperor Alexander was drawn up in Taganrog, annexed to the report of Baron Diebitsch, dated December 1st, 1825, and sent to the emperor Constantine.[b]

ALISON’S ESTIMATE OF ALEXANDER I

Majestic in figure, a benevolent expression of countenance, gave Alexander I that sway over the multitude which ever belongs to physical advantages in youthful princes; while the qualities of his understanding and the feelings of his heart secured the admiration of all whose talents fitted them to judge of the affairs of nations. Misunderstood by those who formed their opinion only from the ease and occasional levity of his manner, he was early formed to great determinations, and evinced in the most trying circumstances, during the French invasion and the congress of Vienna, a solidity of judgment equalled only by the strength of his resolution. He had formed, early in life, an intimacy with the Polish prince, Czartorinski, and another attachment, of a more tender nature, to a lady of the same nation; and in consequence he considered the Poles so dear to him, that many of the best informed patriots in that country hailed his accession to the throne as the first step towards the restoration of its nationality. A disposition naturally generous and philanthropic, moulded by precepts of Laharpe, had strongly imbued his mind with liberal principles, which shone forth in full and perhaps dangerous lustre when he was called on to act as the pacificator of the world after the fall of Paris. But subsequent experience convinced him of the extreme danger of prematurely transplanting the institutions of one country into another in a different stage of civilisation; and his later years were chiefly directed to objects of practical improvement, and the preparation of his subjects, by the extension of knowledge and the firmness of government, for those privileges which, if suddenly conferred, would have involved in equal ruin his empire and himself.[g]

SKRINE’S ESTIMATE OF ALEXANDER I

Of Alexander I it may be truly said that no monarch ever wielded unlimited power with a loftier resolve to promote the happiness of his people. And not theirs alone; for he sympathised with all the myriads doomed to suffering by false ideals and effete institutions. In him men saw the long-expected Messiah who was to give peace to a distracted world. But his nature had an alloy of feminine weakness, unfitting him to bear the reformer’s cross. He was too sensitive of impressions derived from without; too easily led by counsellors who gained his confidence but were not always worthy of it. In youth he was swayed by noble infatuations and enamoured of the most diverse ideas in turn. But when he stood confronted with a crisis in his country’s fortunes he rose superior to vacillation and kept a great design steadily in view. The will-power thus developed, and the resources at his command, made him for a brief period the leading figure in the civilised world. Despondency came with the inevitable reaction which followed the effort. He was drawn into the mazes of German illuminism, which lessened his capacity for persistent resolve. Its effect was heightened by his failure to pierce the dense phalanxes of ignorance around him, and by the unvarying ingratitude which requited his efforts for the public weal. Increasing physical weakness hastened the death of his generous illusions. An excessive devotion to duty exhausted his flagging powers and he became unequal to the task of governing all the Russias. As a dying tree is strangled by parasitical growths, so was Alexander in his decadence attacked by the enemies of human progress. When Metternich and Araktcheiev gained the mastery, all hope of domestic reform and consistent foreign policy disappeared. But despite the shadows which darkened his declining years, Alexander I of Russia will stand out in history as one of the few men born in the purple who rightly appraised the accident of birth and the externals of imperial rank; who held opinions far in advance of his age, and never wittingly abused his limitless powers; who displayed equal firmness in danger and magnanimity in the hour of triumph.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[60] In the year 1812 Alexander had granted a charter to the Jesuit College of Polotsk, raising it to the rank of an “academy” and giving it rights and privileges equal to those of the university; he was then probably governed by political considerations concerning Poland, and in the charter he refers to the college as “affording great advantages for the education of youth” and trusts that the “Jesuits will labour in Poland dans le bon sens” (along the right lines.)

[61] Much earlier, in 1807, the emperor had expressed himself to General Savari upon this question in the following words: “I want to bring the country out of the state of barbarism in which this traffic in men leaves it. I will say more—if civilisation were more advanced, I would abolish this slavery even if it were to cost me my head.”

[62] Étienne de Grelle Mobillier was born in France in 1760 and was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. At the beginning of the French Revolution he went to America and there entered the society of Friends or Quakers. He subsequently repeatedly visited Europe with various philanthropic aims, mainly in order to strengthen the principles of a morally religious life amongst mankind.

[63] [Prince A. N. Galitzin.]

[64] General-adjutant, chief of the guards staff.

[65] [“Little father,” a title sometimes given to the Russian sovereigns by their subjects.]

[66] The informer was an inferior officer of lancers. His name was Sherwood, and he was of English origin.

[67] She took the name of Elizabeth Alexievna.